


they say my lover is strange

by OpheliaMarina



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4736099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaMarina/pseuds/OpheliaMarina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So everyone’s been up your butt about me,” Chloe says, leaning back against the hood of the truck. She’s pleased with herself, Max can tell; she wouldn’t have the blue hair or the tattoo or the penchant to kiss Max everywhere, at every opportunity, if she minded being talked about. “What do they want to know? What designer I wear? What I taste like?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	they say my lover is strange

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated especially to Katy for the idea, and to Mick for enthusiasm!

It's not like she's ever been chatty or anything, but in later autumn it's almost as though Max Caulfield is fading away. 

This would've been a lot less noticeable if Max herself hadn't become so prominently noticeable in such a short period of time. She's saved Kate, for one thing. She fucked with Nathan and made it out alive, she's been seen cavorting with that creepy drug dealer in the RV and she came out of that one too. She's been asking questions and getting angry. She's been saying all the right things to all the right people. And now apparently she's hooking up with the bizarre punk girl who got kicked out of Blackwell a while back. 

And by far, the most mysterious thing about Max is the punk girl. Everyone knows her by reputation, rather than name. But still, a reputation for flipping off Principal Wells while skateboarding backwards and away from getting kicked out of private school isn't one that mixes quite logically with the reputation of Max Caulfield, mysterious and wise savior of the meek and helpless. 

They had happened fast, too. According to Warren, the two girls had only been hanging out for a week before they started making out all over campus. (Sometimes tastelessly, sometimes not- mostly they're known for just always being together, hand in hand, eyes in eyes. Still, there is a rumor floating around that Madsen caught them getting hot and heavy in the pool.) But conclusively, Max's transformation from quiet hippie to radical messiah figure had started turning its head around the same time the two girls had met, and Blackwell needed to know if Chloe Price was cause or effect. 

Unfortunately for Max, she became the most interesting person in Arcadia Bay in the aftermath of the week she wanted to think about the least. 

\---

Juliet Watson was the first on the case, being an ace reporter and also being willing to sit in Max’s room alone for three hours until she came back. She also held composure quite well, even when the Subject returned at nine thirty pm, kicked off her shoes, turned towards the bed, noticed Juliet, and promptly yelped, “Oh fucking- Jesus Christ, Juliet!”

“Hey, Max,” Juliet says, chipper as anything, legs crossed and pen tapping idly against one knee. “You look so cute, you have a hot date?”

Suspiciously, Max crosses to her couch and tosses her jacket across it. She does look cute; she’s wearing a skirt, which Juliet’s ninety-nine percent sure is a first for her, and a well-fit black band tee. And, unless Juliet’s instincts are wrong (and they’re almost never wrong, no matter what Dana says), that jacket isn’t hers. It’s too big, too long in the arms. “Maybe… I did. If you consider the Two Whales hot.”

“Ooh!” Juliet says, as if she didn’t already know. As if she hadn’t already been in contact with Trevor and Zach, who she’d bought into staking out the Two Whales for her. “With whom?”

Apparently not feeling coy, Max turns back around and puts a hand on her hip. “Is it really a secret?”

Of course not. As if everyone hasn’t seen or heard about Max and Chloe Price making out here and there, seen cuddling here and there, always clutching onto each other like it was the last time, like they hadn’t seen each other an hour ago. Juliet taps her pen faster. “Well, not really. Chloe… Price, right?”

A smile ghosts across Max’s face, but nothing more. “Yeah,” she says, and nothing more.

Juliet waits. Max waits. Time passes.

Finally, Juliet puts forth, “So, how did you two meet? Was it like-”

“No, nope,” Max says, and suddenly she’s shoving Juliet out the door. “Nope, not doing this, good night Juliet,” and then the door slams in her face.

Dana cackles when she tells her. “Told you so,” she says smugly, which is awful because she did tell Juliet so.

\---

Naturally, Dana herself is subtler. Probably because she knows what it’s like to be on the opposite end of gossip. 

“So,” she says casually, her legs curled under her as she ties a friendship bracelet around Max’s wrist. “Chloe Price, huh? I didn’t know she was your… type.”

Max sighs. They’re both sitting on Dana’s bed, shoeless and relaxed, but now she straightens up, and looks pointedly at the friendship bracelet still being knotted around her wrist. “Did Juliet set you up to this? Because if yes, the bracelet doubling as a handcuff was a clever ploy.”

“It’s not a handcuff, it’s a friendship bracelet,” Dana says, affronted. “And one I spent a lot of time making, thankyouverymuch. Besides, I’m not snooping, girl, I’m being a pal! A buddy! What’s wrong with a little girl talk?”

Still, Max doesn’t seem to quite buy it. She narrows her eyes. “You swear?”

Dana rolls hers, and finishes the knot, sitting back on her haunches. “Uh, yeah. Wouldn’t it make me, like, the biggest hypocrite ever if I started spreading other people’s shit around? No, thank you.”

The uncertainty drains out of Max’s face, and she nods slowly. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, me and Chloe…” Her face colors, just a little, and Dana hums with delight. “We’re together, I guess.”

“You guess?” Dana repeats gleefully. “Max, I’m not guessing, and you’re the one in the relationship! What’s there to guess about?”

“I mean,” Max says, and she’s full-on blushing now. “We are together. We just haven’t like, said so. Like, we go out to eat, and hang out, and we, you know, we…” She stops, scowls at Dana’s waggling eyebrows, and continues. “But it wasn’t like one of us said, let’s go out, let’s be girlfriends, I don’t know. This is just how it is now.”

Wisely, Dana nods, then grins again. “Oh, but that’s so romantic, that means she swept you off your feet! No words, just the passion between you-”

Ignoring Max’s fondly exasperated, “Dana,” she goes on. “It’s like that French saying! What is it… like, ‘the lightning strike’ or something. Coup de foudre!”

At that, Max’s eyes go a little far away, and she gazes at her wrist, where the friendship bracelet sits thin and warm against the skin. “A lightning strike,” she repeats, quietly. “Something like that, maybe.”

There’s something so somber about the way she says it that Dana shuts up for a moment and just watches her. It feels respectful, somehow, to observe her sadness.

Then she smiles again. “Anyway, this is great! I’ve finally found someone to double date Trevor with! I mean, I tried Juliet and Zach but I guess skaters and football players don’t really mix? Anyway, I’ve seen your girlfriend on a skateboard so it should be totally fine. Oh, and you have to bring her to the Halloween party!”

Max has a nice smile. Dana’s always thought so, even before they started to hang out. She hopes Chloe appreciates it as much as she does. “Thanks, Dana,” Max says. “I’ll tell her we’re invited.”

\---

Their boyfriends try to show support as best they can, and Max does her best to appreciate Zach’s goodhearted if annoying shouts of, “Yeah! Max the Magnificent and her hot girl! Those’re my homegirls over there!” every time Chloe comes to pick her up from school as best she can. Trevor (and by extension, Justin) are at least easier to manage. When she shows up hand-in-hand with Chloe at the skate park, they barely make a big deal out of it.

“Hey, hey, Chloe Price!” Justin cries, slapping Chloe’s outstretched palm when she extends it and raising a pleased eyebrow at her smirk. “Been forever. Ready to play with the big boys again, huh?”

Chloe drops her board to her feet and raises her own eyebrow, a challenge. “I don’t know, you seen any around?”

The crew of skaters whoop, and Justin gives an appreciative chuckle. “Oh, it is so on, girl. And look who it is! Max Caulfield, woman of the hour! Chloe finally show you how to thrash?”

“Maybe someday,” Max says, and gives Chloe a curious little side-eye. Chloe winks at her. “Not today, though. I’m just here to watch. And maybe take pictures.”

“Coolio,” Justin says easily. “If you want, you can go sit on the ramp over there, we don’t use that one so much anymore. Trevor, help the lady up.”

Waving off Max’s protest that she can climb a ramp, thanks, Trevor accompanies her to the top anyway, sits down beside her, and takes a swig from his water bottle. For a silent while, they watch the kids below skate up and down, down and up, blurs of color and sound. Occasionally, Max will light up and snap a photo, but mostly her eyes stay fixed on the blue smear of shrieking laughter flashing around the park. 

“You know,” Trevor says conversationally, “if my girlfriend or Watson knew we were chilling like this, they’d want me to get some info out of you.”

Max barely twitches, just lifts her hands and takes another snapshot. “Yeah, probably. I know they’ve been having trouble doing it themselves.”

Trevor doesn’t know a lot about Max, actually. Just a quiet voice and a soft smile coupled with sharp eyes, the sound of a shutter and a ghostly pale hand reaching out towards Kate on the roof. So instead he says, “You doing okay, Max? Been a rough couple of weeks.”

The camera lowers in Max’s hands, and she nods, slowly. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, it has been, hasn’t it.”

Trevor waits, but she seems to be waiting too, gazing down at where Chloe has come to a pause on her board, crowing with laughter. “I think I’m lucky,” she says. “Not to sound fake deep, but I don’t know if I’m okay. But I am lucky.”

He glances downwards too. “Because of Chloe?”

She gives a little smile, nods a little nod, and she does open her mouth to speak, but before she can, there’s a loud crash from below. When they look downwards, Chloe’s on her ass and rubbing her head, looking sourly in the direction of her rolling skateboard.

“Shit, Chloe!” Max calls, shifting her knees a little. “You okay?”

Getting back onto her feet, Chloe seems to mutter something under her breath, then she smiles sunnily up at Max. “All good, babe!”

The concern leaves Max’s face, and instead curls into an amused smile. “Wow,” she calls down again. “You suck!”

This leads to Chloe falling off her board five more times, in increasingly convoluted and furious efforts to prove that she doesn’t, in fact, suck. 

Trevor stops her as she and Max are about to head out, Max already climbing into the truck and the other guys skating away. “Hey,” he says, and she eyes him quizzically. Not entirely sure of what to say, he sticks with a kind of lame, “Your girlfriend’s pretty awesome.”

And sure, he’d seen Chloe smile before, but that was all bravado back in the days with Rachel, all bared teeth and glinting eyes. Now, when he says so, it’s like her whole face blossoms into a grin. It’s the most genuine expression he’s ever seen, maybe on anybody. She tosses a fond look back towards her car, where Max is struggling into the passenger seat. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “You jealous?”

\---

Warren was basically the first to know anyways, so it’s not actually a huge shock to him to see Max and Chloe walking arm-in-arm across campus. Disappointing, maybe. But not surprising.

As they come closer to where he’s peacefully resting against a tree, minding his own business, maybe gonna take a nap who knows, he can hear a snatch of Chloe’s voice. “… can make out with you if you want. Right here right now. Screw being subtle.”

“No,” Max says, even if she does sound a little tempted. Warren can’t blame her; he doesn’t think he knows anyone who would pass up an opportunity to make out with Chloe Price. “We’re going to be mature about this. Actually, I’m going to be mature about this. You’re going back to the car.”

“What! I can be mature!” Some low whispering, some grumbling. “Uh, fine. But you totally owe me. Also, Joyce wants us in half an hour for dinner, so don’t drag it out.”

His eyes are closed, so all he hears are the pattering of feet. He assumes it’s Chloe going back to the car until there’s a thump of butt-against-grass next to him. “’Sup, Warren.”

Well, that’s embarrassing. They were totally talking about him. He opens his eyes and sits up straighter, turning leftwards to see Max smiling prettily if halfheartedly at him. “Mad Max! What’s up?” To make it easier on both of them, he nods towards the beat-up idling truck a few feet away. “You got a hot date with the punk princess?”

Looking away, Max tucks some loose hair behind her ear. “Uh, yeah. I do, actually.”

She looks at him quickly, as if to gauge his shock/heartbreak, and okay, maybe there was a little of the latter, earlier. But he already knew. He’s had time to deal. “Yeah, I figured. When she texted me last week she didn’t seem to be playing around.”

Max gapes a little, then giggles and groans at the same time, and leans back against the tree trunk and closes her own eyes. “God, I still can’t believe she really texted you about that.” Then she opens one eye, to look at him with. “So-”

They’re both straightforward peeps. They’re both adults. Warren can totally handle this. “I understand what’s going on here,” he says, adopting his grandiosest voice for maximum dramatic effect. “You’re letting me down easily, for fear our invaluable friendship might be in peril. Well, Madame Maxine, I can’t lie. I’m tempted to cut all ties with you and turn to cry on the shoulders of my thousands upon thousands of other friends.”

She’s smiling, a little. She’s rolling her eyes. He goes on, “But! I am willing to be the bigger person in this scenario. Don’t thank me. Just remember me fondly.”

“You’re such a dweeb,” she says, but there’s a laugh caught in her throat, and she leans against him, just a little, so it’s not so bad. It’ll be okay.

“Just,” he says, and uses his real voice. “You’re gonna be okay, right? Like, she seems cool, but maybe too cool. Has she got you started on chain smoking? Because there was an article in Popular Science about-” 

Now she laughs for real, and stands up, brushing off her knees. “Thanks for the concern, Warren,” she says. “But don’t worry about me. I can handle myself.”

She gives him a tap on the head and heads back towards the truck, pausing at its door to give him a wave. He waves back. There’s no need to be petty.

Chloe gives him a brief wave as they speed away too, so that’s just an added bonus.

\---

Brooke is a little harder to convince.

When Chloe and Max pass by her, her eyes stay fixed on her drone, and therefore miss the sight of them holding hands. When Max gives her a tentative wave, she looks up. “Oh. Hi, Max. And…”

“Chloe,” the other girl supplies easily, and tosses her arm over Max’s shoulders. There’s a glint in her eye that Brooke has a hard time deciphering. It could be amusement. It could be a challenge. Curiosity, maybe. “What’s up. Brooke, right?”

So Max has talked about her. Who knows in what way. Warily, Brooke eyes Max from where she’s standing slightly slouched under Chloe’s arm. “Friend of yours?”

“Um,” Max says, and gives Chloe an uncertain glance. Chloe prods her in the ribs, grinning. “Girlfriend, actually.”

“Ah,” Brooke says, then looks back to her pad. The two girls stand there for a moment, waiting for her to look back up. Which she does, a second later, with enough force to give herself whiplash. “Wait!”

She hears Max murmur a weary, “told you,” under her breath, but she ignores it in favor of saying, hurriedly, “Wait, wait. Like your girlfriend-girlfriend? Or the heteronormative term for a female pal?”

Max rolls her eyes, and Chloe grins, eyes full of what’s sure to be amusement now. “Nah,” she says, and pulls Max closer until they’re basically flush against each other. “We make out and stuff.” Max huffs and elbows her, but Chloe just laughs and kisses the top of her head.

If it’s a tactical move, then Max is a genius and Brooke’s knocked flat on her ass. But Max isn’t an actor, and besides, the glow to Chloe Whoever’s eyes as she smushes her cheek against the crown of Max’s head seems entirely genuine. “So,” she says uncertainly. “So, Warren-”

“Holy shit,” Chloe says, looking delighted, and Max throws her hands in the air. 

“Brooke!” she says. “I’ve told you like seven hundred times! I’m not into Warren! We’re just friends!”

Well, it certainly seems that way now. Still, Brooke feels doubtful. “Everyone always says they’re just friends.”

Smugly, Chloe moves her arm to loop it around Max’s waist. “We don’t,” she says, and throws a salute Brooke’s way before starting to guide Max away. “Later, Princess Leia.”

Her drone follows them as they saunter, and sees Max shove at Chloe’s side, sees Chloe’s mouth open in a peal of laughter, sees Max stand up on her tiptoes and Chloe lean down to kiss. 

Brooke sighs. Technically there’s no proof, but they look in love as far as she can tell.

\---

Logan isn't much of a talker. Somehow, this is worse for him rather than better. 

All anyone knows concretely about the Logan Incident (seen by approximately seven people leaving campus on October 29th) is that he seemed to have approached Max and Chloe first, where they'd been sitting on the Blackwell fountain and talking. (Whether they were cuddling or not is up for debate.) Some words had been exchanged between Max and Logan, of an unknowable nature. Chloe had stood up, then Max, (several sources, closer to the scene, have agreed that Max looked distinctly uncomfortable), and Logan put his hand on Max's shoulder. Then he was on the ground.

Everyone agreed that it happened very fast, but the general consensus is that Chloe decked him. 

A snatch of Chloe screaming was heard distinctly, along the lines of, "If you so much as touch my girlfriend again, you fucking piece of shit- you touch another girl like-" then Max had grabbed her by the shoulders, and they murmured to each other for a moment. Then, with a firm arm over Max's shoulders, Chloe turned on her heel and stomped back to her truck, with Max giving the still-grounded Logan a furtive look over her shoulder. 

"I saw them making out in the car after," Justin claims. "Like, really kind of angry making out. It was pretty hot. But, uh-" And here in the storytelling he would look uncomfortable. "Don't tell Chloe I said that, all right? Or anything." 

When Juliet eagerly asks her about the event later, Max just shrugs, snapping a photo of a bird through her window. "It's our business," she says. "If you want to ask Logan and he's willing to say what happened, you can publish that. But I think what's important is that he's not going to be messing with me or Daniel or anyone else again." 

He doesn’t. At least not where Max can see.

\---

Kate knows when something is supposed to be private, how you can want something in your life to belong to yourself and yourself alone. The only question she asks is, “Are you happy?”

That gives Max a little pause. They’re sitting together on the bench outside the dorms, and Max is trying to bait squirrels for photos as Kate sketches them. At the question, Max goes still enough for one to run right up to her hand and start eating out of it. Quickly, she snaps a photo, and Kate smiles. 

“I mean, that’s a complicated question,” Max says, a little evasively. She shakes the photo out, puts it in her bag, and leans back on her hands, palms gripping the cool stone bench. “In the existential way, you mean?”

Chuckling quietly, Kate shakes her head. “Just in the general way. I mean, Max- you don’t need to tell me, but it seems like before you’d been so preoccupied and unsure, like the world was on your shoulders.” 

Max gives a startled laugh, but Kate just smiles gently and continues. “And now, it seems you’ve mellowed out, but you still have something eating at you. I know what that’s like. I just want to know you’re okay.”

She doesn’t stop drawing, and Max’s eyes follow the looping and skritching of her pencil absently. “Kate,” she says, with a surprised little laugh. “You’re a great friend.”

“Not as good as you,” Kate says easily, and leans a little against Max’s shoulder. Max leans back, a triangulation of the bodies. “I want to watch out for you, too. And I meant what I said in the hospital, about guardian angels. I don’t need details, Max, but that girl, Chloe-”

There’s a delicate pause. Max’s shoulders stiffen, just slightly. She’s heard a song like this many times. 

Not this one, though. Not Kate’s sweet, earnest voice saying, simply, “You’re happy, right?”

She closes her eyes, and listens to the birds sing. It’s been a long time since she last heard them. “We’re happy together,” she says.

\---

Taylor and Courtney, usually privy to all the latest gossip, haven’t quite caught on by the time they’ve invited themselves into Max’s room a few nights before the Halloween party. Taylor is idly braiding strands of Max’s hair as Courtney digs diligently through her clothes, and Max has barely looked up from her box of photos until Taylor says excitedly, “Ooh, Max! Do you have a date for the party? Because I have someone who would die if we set you two up.”

Max sits up so fast some hairs come out of her head and into Taylor’s palm. “OW, Jesus- oh, sorry, Taylor. But, um. I do have one. A date, I guess.” 

“Ugh, if it’s that Warren guy, he doesn’t count,” Courtney says dismissively, withdrawing a sleeveless top from Max’s mess of clothes and eyeing it critically. “He’s a study buddy, not boyfriend material.”

Carefully, Max drops her photos back into the cardboard box, and gently pulls out of Taylor’s grip. “Actually, it’s more girlfriend side of the spectrum.”

Courtney bangs her head on the top of Max’s closet, and Taylor gasps theatrically. “Whaaaat?” she says, grabbing Max’s hands in unadulterated shock. “Who? Who is it?”

Almost absentmindedly, Max’s head turns to glance at her photo box. Following her gaze, Taylor reaches across her lap and snatches the topmost photo out of it, ignoring Max’s protest of, “Hey, wait-!” She examines the photo, and her eyes go wide before she holds it up again. 

“Her?” she demands. “This is the girl you’re dating?”

Admittedly, it is a picture of Chloe; head thrown back in a laugh, eyes closed and hair vibrantly blue in the shadow of the rising sun. Max snatches it back, grumbling. “Jeez, Taylor,” she mutters. “Some respect for personal affects? Honor code?”

Which basically confirms it. Taylor and Courtney look at each other.

\---

It’s less than half an hour later when Max runs into Victoria outside the dorms.

‘Running into’ might be too casual a turn of phrase, as it’s hardly a coincidence. Victoria’s clearly been waiting, tapping her foot impatiently and glaring when Max all but slams into her when she opens the door.

“Is it true you’re banging that girl with the blue hair who looks like she personally recycles her own wardrobe?” she asks, without any preamble.

Max scowls, grip tightening on the strap of her bag. “Good to see you too, Victoria.”

After a long, heavily drawn out sigh, Victoria closes her eyes. “Okay. I’m sorry. The thing is, I’m worried about you.”

That softens Max up easily, and her lips start to curl back up. “Are you.”

“I don’t have all the details,” Victoria says, with her eyes still screwed shut. “But I know some fucked up shit has happened. If she’s like, your coping mechanism, or whatever, I can tell you from experience that the bad boy thing- or girl- it doesn’t work out well.”

It’s such a Victoria way of showing concern, brittle and mean and without having to look at her own kindness, that Max can’t help but smile all the way. “Thanks, Victoria,” she says, sincere. “I appreciate you trying to watch out for me. But the thing is, with Chloe-”

Whatever’s about to say is lost in the gunning of a truck coming into park, and a loud curse. Chloe all but falls out of the driver’s seat, fumbling with her keys and muttering, but regardless starting to fall in step towards the two of them.

Hand coming to sit tentatively on Max's shoulder, Victoria wrinkles her nose in Chloe's direction. "That’s her, right?" she says, trying to conceal disdain and failing. “Well, I don’t know what you’re thinking, Max. She's trouble."

Max gives a little huff of a laugh, and she could've said a lot of things, like how Victoria was another kind of trouble, just better composed; how Chloe wasn't what Victoria thought she was, she was special. How Chloe was trouble, she was and Max knew it, how she was blood on a torn mouth and the gentleness of thin hands and the delayed reaction of surprised laughter and the upturn of Max's mouth. 

Instead, she just shrugs. "Maybe," she says. "But she's mine." 

And she's giggling when Chloe comes over to sweep her up and kiss her, and dips her back like a princess, like a real girl in love, and it's been so long since she’s heard Max laugh that Victoria is only able to work up a vague sneer at Chloe's offhand greeting of, "What's up, Queen Beeyotch."

\---

There’s no articles about them, no posters and no fliers, only curious whispers. But isn’t it better that way?

“So everyone’s been up your ass about me,” Chloe says, leaning back against the hood of the truck. She’s pleased with herself, Max can tell; she wouldn’t have the blue hair or the tattoo or the penchant to kiss Max everywhere, at every opportunity, if she minded being talked about. “What do they want to know? What designer I wear? What I taste like?”

Max lies down next her. “I wish I could laugh like that was a joke,” she says wearily. “A guy on the football team literally asked me if we’d fucked in the swimming pool for real.”

Chloe sits up, wide-eyed, and Max just sighs and motions her back down. “No, we’re not going to fuck in the swimming pool for real. I’ve had enough run-ins with Johnny Law. Besides, I don’t think it’s hygienic.”

Reluctantly, Chloe reclines backwards again. “You’re so boring. How did I wind up with a girlfriend who cares about something as boring as hygiene?” Before Max can tell her everyone cares about hygiene, she continues, “So what did you say to him?”

“Nothing, actually,” Max says. “Zachary, you know him? Totally punched him out. Came out of nowhere, too, scared the shit out of me. Started yelling about-” She lowers her voice, drawing her chin inwards. “‘None of that shit, dude! No disrespecting chicks, man! Tolerance zone! Besides, if you fuck with Max you fuck with me!’ Juliet had to reign him in. Then they started making out so I couldn’t say thanks.”

Chloe’s giggling. “Did he really say tolerance zone.”

Max nods solemnly, turning her head to face Chloe, tilting away from the sun. “Besides,” she says softly. “I’m good with people knowing we’re together. But what we do, what we’ve done- that’s ours, isn’t it? No one else needs the details.”

That sobers Chloe up, and her head turns too, so their noses just touch at the tip. Their hands find each other easily, naturally, and she squints against the oncoming sunset over Max’s shoulder. “I know,” she says, uncharacteristically serious. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to show you off sometimes, but mostly I just-” If the redness in her cheeks isn’t the sun, Max doesn’t have to say so. She can smile, but she doesn’t have to say anything. “Mostly I just want to keep you to myself.” 

Keeping Chloe has been eating at Max for too long now. Keeping Chloe happy, keeping Chloe out of trouble, keeping Chloe alive, keeping Chloe where she could see her, where she could touch her. Now all she has to do is just keep her.

It doesn’t feel any easier, but it does feel lighter. 

“I know,” Max says, then she grins. “I know, I’m irresistible.”

Chloe’s mouth drops open just a little, then it curls into an impossible smile. “God, you pain in my ass,” she says, and now the distance between them is shuffling out of existence, “get your narcissistic butt over here.”

It’s hard to believe that one of them is a god and the other is a ghost, not when they’re lit like this in the soft orange and yellow of light on water. In the fading sun you’d never be able to tell which is which. Only that they’re girls in love, kissing as though the world is never ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Isn't Badlands so good? Wasn't Strange Love such a good song!
> 
> College life is going pretty slow at the moment, which gave me time to work on this. It was a lot of fun, because clearly I love ensemble casts, but I doubt it'll fit into canon past Episode Five. Just a hunch. If it does, then... 
> 
> Next is probably some Until Dawn femslash. Game was good but could've been GREAT if it weren't so straight, am I right?


End file.
